The Art of Manliness - #625： The Code of the Warrior

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast war is a violent

00:00:12.340 and bloody business but it's rarely a no holds barred free for all instead codes of conduct

00:00:17.200 that determine what is and isn't honorable behavior on the battlefield have existed since

00:00:21.140 ancient times my guest today explored these various codes in a book she wrote during the

00:00:25.240 decade she spent teaching at the United States Naval Academy her name is Shannon French she's

00:00:29.640 a professor of ethics and philosophy and her book is the code of the warrior exploring warrior values

00:00:34.360 past and present Shannon I begin our conversation with the pointed questions she used opposed to the

00:00:39.000 cadet she taught as to how being a warrior was different from being a killer or murderer and

00:00:43.280 when killing is and isn't ethical she then explains how the warrior codes which developed all around

00:00:47.660 the world arose organically from the warriors themselves for their own protection and how

00:00:52.460 these codes are more about identity than rules Shannon I then take a tour of warrior codes across

00:00:57.000 time and culture starting with the code in Homer's Iliad and then moving into the strengths and

00:01:01.120 weaknesses of the stoic philosophy which undergirded the code of the Romans from there we unpack the

00:01:05.820 code of the medieval knights of Arthurian legend what American Indians can teach soldiers about the

00:01:10.420 need to make clear transitions between the home front and the war front and how the bushido code of

00:01:14.940 the samurais sought to balance the influence of four different religions we in our conversation the role

00:01:19.620 warrior codes play today in an age when artificial intelligence and drones are having a bigger role

00:01:24.720 in combat after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash warrior code Shannon joins

00:01:30.300 you now via clearcast.io all right Shannon French welcome to the show thank you for having me so you

00:01:45.540 are a professor of philosophy who specializes in ethics particularly ethics and warfare how did that

00:01:51.940 happen I get that question a lot well first of all I'd always had a fascination for military history

00:01:59.620 in fact that goes so far back that I ran into someone I hadn't seen since I was eight years old a few

00:02:07.060 years ago and he said that he saw that I had written a book on code of the warrior and he said well that

00:02:13.520 makes sense so apparently even as an eight-year-old child I had shown an interest in this area but going

00:02:20.480 forward when I got into graduate school my work was focused around the very difficult issues where

00:02:29.480 self-interest and ethics seemed to conflict and in looking at that area of course the stakes are never

00:02:35.880 higher than when it's life and death that led me into military ethics and what ultimately changed my

00:02:43.940 life was getting the position to teach that at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis well let's talk about

00:02:50.980 that so you you you taught ethics at the Naval Academy and you had one class called code of the

00:02:56.080 warrior which you turned into a book that we're going to talk about today what was the response to

00:03:00.960 that class to this idea of the code of the warrior well I have to say I have so many wonderful memories

00:03:07.340 of that time in my life and that experience of teaching code of the warrior to the midshipmen

00:03:12.720 essentially this was an opportunity for them to really look at the issues that they would be facing

00:03:22.220 very soon after their graduation and commissioning and to look at them from this background of not being

00:03:30.740 the first people on earth to face the kind of problems that were in their future to feel part of

00:03:36.620 something longer a legacy that they were joining and so there was actually quite a lot of enthusiasm

00:03:42.280 around that course and I will say we also had a lot of fun with it and it sounds strange perhaps to talk

00:03:48.800 about having fun with a military ethics course but what we were doing was trying to as much as possible

00:03:55.980 let ourselves get into the mindset of these different warrior cultures and individual warriors

00:04:02.600 and really try to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine what they faced and what we could learn

00:04:11.160 from them going forward and that of course is something that could not have been more relevant and

00:04:19.060 unfortunately while I was at the Naval Academy in the time that I was there in the 11 years that I was

00:04:24.120 there we went from a force that was largely focused on things like humanitarian interventions

00:04:30.600 to 9-11 happening and operation enduring freedom and operation Iraqi freedom and my students were going

00:04:41.400 off to war so it went from being a course that they enjoyed to almost having an urgency to it

00:04:51.420 it became extremely relevant very fast it did well I mean you talk about in your book the code of the

00:04:57.260 warrior on the first day of this class you'd often ask your students just give them a thought problem

00:05:03.580 and it was this it was explain the difference between words like warrior killer murderer fighter

00:05:10.660 etc I mean first off how do they typically answer that question and then what were you hoping

00:05:14.940 you would get your students to see going through this problem yes I absolutely that exercise was

00:05:22.180 critical to getting to the core of the point of the course and and really also the point of the book

00:05:27.640 what I wanted them to think about is that the act of killing is usually taboo in fact it's it's one of the

00:05:36.960 strongest taboos that we have as humans the idea that you would take another life is not taken lightly

00:05:43.800 so what is the difference that could be found in killing in war and how do we identify where those

00:05:52.280 lines are so when I asked them that question it was interesting sometimes the responses were almost

00:05:58.720 angry like you know how how dare you even think to compare what people do as war fighters to

00:06:06.760 murderers or uh even just killer which sounded cold and purposeless to them for example and murderers

00:06:15.440 sounded definitely immoral unethical and looking at the different choices though and analyzing them

00:06:21.820 they were able to identify why it mattered so much to them they did not want to be correctly labeled

00:06:30.360 any of those other labels they wanted to know and they wanted to believe that what they were doing

00:06:39.000 was distinct in an important way and and not a a way that would fall apart in the stress of of

00:06:47.300 actually having to make these decisions in real time and I think it also shows even when you're

00:06:52.120 engaging in warfare and you think okay it's my killing is legitimized there's still a line there that you

00:06:58.060 can cross eventually and some of these students kind of picked up on that as well they absolutely did

00:07:04.080 and I think that's one of the most important things is that they recognize that you can commit murder

00:07:10.820 during a war there that there is still an understanding that some types of killing in war fall under the

00:07:19.500 heading of still being a war fighter being a warrior but others do cross that line and they become

00:07:25.920 personal and they have to do with rage or vengeance or despair in some cases and even hatred and certainly

00:07:37.540 large helping of dehumanizing the people on the other side that you're fighting against and that if you do

00:07:44.580 cross that line into those kinds of understandings of what the killing is that you're doing it's really

00:07:51.440 hard to get back out of that place that you go and that's something we talked a lot about that if you

00:07:57.920 cross the line and you kill out of one of these emotions that is not in any way linked to just doing your job

00:08:09.580 but is that deeply personal kind of killing then it's really hard even to find your way back to the

00:08:18.580 person you were before and what i think what i feel great about this book is you know you explore

00:08:23.700 warrior codes from throughout history and throughout cultures and i think the big point is that this is

00:08:30.060 warrior codes are ubiquitous in humanity i we often think that you know 21st century westerners or

00:08:37.040 whatever that we had sort of moral superiority over people who were thousands of years ago but as you

00:08:42.760 point out like even the ancient greeks grappled with this issue in their way i mean it wasn't as

00:08:47.760 maybe how we do it but they were grappling this between this line between being a murderer and

00:08:53.980 being a warrior i mean why do you think that is why do you think humanity has come up with codes of

00:08:58.360 warrior throughout time and culture well i think first of all that that it's good to point out as

00:09:05.520 you just did that this isn't a new invention and and occasionally i will get folks who uh think that

00:09:12.140 even worrying about having limits or concepts of restraint for those who who fight in wars is some

00:09:20.300 kind of even like fuzzy touchy feely new agey kind of thing that that came up recently and that's simply

00:09:28.100 not the case and one of the main reasons that it's not the case is that all of these different codes

00:09:34.340 throughout history were not imposed from the outside they came up organically within these

00:09:41.600 warrior cultures primarily as a way to protect the warriors themselves that is the absolutely central

00:09:49.500 point that i want people to grasp in the book and that i used to teach in the course is that while of

00:09:56.460 course we do need to care and and all of us do care about restraining actions in war in order to

00:10:03.280 protect innocence that's how these laws of war are written in the first place but at the end of the

00:10:09.800 day the codes that the warriors embrace are there to protect them to protect their humanity they're

00:10:16.720 being asked to do something that puts them at great risk for moral injury and moral injury is

00:10:25.160 connected to ptsd it's it's connected to suffering it's connected to a sense of losing your

00:10:33.020 connection to the rest of your society being isolated from them being even driven out we don't want

00:10:39.480 to do that to those that we've already asked so much of that we're asking to fight and sacrifice on

00:10:45.020 our behalf and the best protection we can give them is to give them these lines that they can rely on

00:10:51.460 that help them see what they're doing has meaning has limits and is within that kind of structure

00:11:00.600 and that is absolutely crucial to preserving really the the well-being of warriors themselves

00:11:08.880 and a lot of these codes you know some of them do have very specific rules and regulations supposed

00:11:15.140 to follow today there's you know laws that govern warfare there's rules of engagement but for the

00:11:20.080 most part the code this is a little bit more amorphous it's sort of i mean it's almost aristotelian

00:11:26.960 in its ethics where it's just like you know just be a good person and it doesn't say exactly what

00:11:31.960 you have to do to be a good soldier or be an ethical warrior but people i think inherently understand it

00:11:38.160 yeah i think that's a really good insight actually because what you're looking at with

00:11:43.380 most of these warrior codes is not so much a list of rules but an identity that you're assuming

00:11:49.980 you're taking on the mantle you're taking on an identity that actually requires you to for example

00:11:57.880 be honorable not act dishonorably and that is going to be vague and it is going to depend in part on how

00:12:05.480 it's defined through action within your own group but a lot of why it's vague is that rules by

00:12:14.780 themselves are perhaps too vulnerable uh once you create just a set of rules there's always the

00:12:23.660 chance the situation that you find yourself in doesn't match the rules and then if you have nothing

00:12:29.640 else to fall back on you're lost with no guidance assuming an identity that and you mentioned aristotle

00:12:36.920 which is perfect uh connection here an identity that requires you to embody certain virtues

00:12:43.340 gives you something still to rely on in those complicated situations you can still say okay

00:12:50.380 there's nothing in the rule book about this but if i still want to be a just person if i want to be

00:12:57.560 a honorable person if i want to be a fair person so on so forth then i need to figure out how to still

00:13:07.660 embody those virtues in this situation through my actions i need to wrestle through it myself but with

00:13:13.180 those as my guideposts the other worry with just having a list is that people will also take that as

00:13:20.080 just a minimum this happens a lot i so often have to clarify the difference between ethics and mere

00:13:28.400 compliance and uh compliance with the law doesn't make you a good person just think of it this way if at

00:13:35.320 the end of your days the only good thing someone could say about you is they weren't arrested that

00:13:42.340 that wouldn't be great you know just managing to stay out of trouble isn't the bar we're setting and

00:13:50.440 so these codes try with that intentional vagueness to set the bar higher and to say i want you to be

00:13:59.220 excellent i want you to try to embody all these virtues at once i want you to try to find that

00:14:04.960 balance point even though it's hard a modern example you gave that in the book was the marines

00:14:11.300 you there's you talk about there was this commander who his whole thing was just marines don't do that

00:14:15.900 that was it and without it was very vague but that you know as soon as someone came across something

00:14:21.740 that seemed kind of like squidgy it's like yeah marines don't do that it's not what we do

00:14:25.640 yeah there's a wonderful story about that in mark osiel's book on obeying orders which i love

00:14:31.580 because it's it's from the vietnam war and it's a true story and it explains how those simple four

00:14:37.780 words actually stopped someone from effectively committing a war crime but what it brings across

00:14:44.320 for us is this point that the identity there is stronger also than the rules in the sense that

00:14:54.800 you've chosen to be for example in that case a marine you chose that identity you've embraced it

00:15:04.000 you've gone through all of the rites of passage and so forth to make you feel part of that community

00:15:10.320 and so betraying that is a big deal and it's a big enough deal that psychologically it can overcome

00:15:18.500 the other pressures you're going to feel because certainly you can't have these conversations without

00:15:24.580 talking about how incredibly hard it is to hold this kind of restraint in some of these circumstances

00:15:31.800 that you are in fact going to be tempted to do the wrong thing that's something that i always tried

00:15:38.320 to talk about in my class that i didn't want them to give me pat answers if i said something like

00:15:45.620 would you ever shoot an unarmed pow if i just asked it like that the students would of course say

00:15:52.100 why no ma'am that's wrong i would not do that but that's unhelpful that it's just a pat response to

00:16:00.740 to a straightforward question what you have to do instead is actually construct a scenario in your mind

00:16:08.920 where you might really be tempted where the person you've been dealing with has been picking off

00:16:15.320 members of your platoon and you've had to see them die in your arms you finally confront say the sniper

00:16:24.700 who's been picking off these folks for that matter to you who are like brothers and sisters to you

00:16:29.960 and they are smug and surrender in a way that says what are you going to do now

00:16:36.720 wouldn't you on some level want to shoot them you have to admit that you would want to before you can

00:16:45.960 talk about why you shouldn't and so getting them there is so important to have the conversation around

00:16:53.540 why does that identity matter why would you want it to be true that even when sorely tempted

00:17:00.820 there would be lines you would never cross so it seems like warrior codes are about really about

00:17:07.200 identity it's really trying to get the soldier to think about their identity as a warrior and

00:17:11.960 warriors behave in a certain way in an ethical way yes that's absolutely true and and i feel like i

00:17:17.440 should mention at this point because there is a conversation that's happening even as we speak

00:17:23.500 in in the u.s military probably in others as well around that word warrior for some that word is

00:17:30.600 uncomfortable they don't like that as the choice to define themselves because for example they

00:17:37.760 associate it with media portrayals of or even potentially video game portrayals of people

00:17:47.340 fighting and killing who don't have restraint who don't have limits and so they don't like that word

00:17:53.180 warrior it sounds like a sort of conan the barbarian sort of thing to them and so i don't want to get

00:17:59.900 completely even though my book is called the code of the warrior i don't want to make it all about

00:18:03.880 that word exactly but instead to make it about the word you use that identity if your identity is as a

00:18:12.140 soldier a sailor an airman a marine maybe warrior doesn't work for you maybe your unit specific identity

00:18:19.380 works for you but the key is it has to be something to which you have fully committed yourself

00:18:25.420 and it has to be something that is linked to these ideas of different virtues and lines that you won't

00:18:33.940 cross because it isn't a meaningful identity if you can hold on to that identity regardless of how you

00:18:40.100 behave it has to have those kind of limits it has to be that but if you do x you're not one of us

00:18:46.800 anymore and that sounds harsh but that's a really important part of all of this we're gonna take a quick

00:18:52.820 break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show oh let's talk about some of these

00:18:59.660 warrior codes that you highlight in the book and you go all the way back to the ancient greeks or even

00:19:04.160 like pre-greek i mean this is like this is we're talking about we're talking about homer's iliad

00:19:08.880 achilles and hector and there what was the code that governed them that you found looking at the the

00:19:15.060 text that we have from there well i mean first of all that is a helpful example of where you can talk

00:19:21.600 about these issues using fiction because while we think that homer was inspired by real events we

00:19:27.540 we still classify his epics as as some kind of fictional works it's embellished there's a lot of

00:19:34.360 greek gods that come in and have cameos and so forth but the point of them is very realistic because what

00:19:42.340 it does is it examines again the internal experience of being at war and those two figures that you

00:19:50.020 mentioned achilles and hector in homer's iliad are particularly relevant today i mean you might

00:19:56.980 i think that's odd but it is true because for example achilles from the very beginning i mean

00:20:03.880 the first word of of the iliad is rage or wrath we sing about the rage of achilles sing goddess the

00:20:10.920 rage of achilles and the rage that he feels is in large part incredibly relatable

00:20:18.640 to our modern troops because it's the fact that he's been stuck in a seemingly unending conflict

00:20:27.760 he feels so far away from home he's not sure if anyone back home cares anymore or if anything he does

00:20:35.780 there really affects them at all or matters to them and he is doubtful of the leadership that he's under

00:20:45.460 and he's not confident that he's being led well and all of that plays into his growing despair about

00:20:54.340 his experience and that's how we meet the great achilles is him really struggling with these

00:21:00.640 psychological concepts that are very familiar to troops today in the forever wars and then later we

00:21:08.020 meet prince hector who has a clearer sense of what he's fighting for because the greeks are literally

00:21:14.340 attacking his home so he knows what's at stake but he is also close to despair because he knows he's outmatched

00:21:23.500 he knows that he can't ultimately defeat the god like achilles and he would quite frankly love to just run

00:21:31.320 away and not have to deal with any of this but he feels the pressure and responsibility to to continue

00:21:37.540 and then when these two men clash one against another you also see these issues of honor and

00:21:44.360 dishonor because for hector even in the midst of everything that that all the pressure he's under

00:21:50.920 and everything that he's enduring he does maintain his code and his internal sense of honor and and even

00:21:58.060 judged against an external sense of honor in his community whereas achilles having lost his best friend

00:22:05.680 and in some ways the last person he really deeply cared about in that situation

00:22:10.920 having lost him he cracks in a way he he loses himself he loses that identity and he ends up going into

00:22:23.460 this one-on-one battle with hector having thrown off any of the restraint having no longer embraced his

00:22:32.080 warrior's code but instead acting almost just on pure instinct like an animal and he is prepared to destroy

00:22:41.720 hector and it is very personal and it is more like a murder than a killing in war

00:22:48.560 yeah i mean i mean even then the the ancient greeks had a there's a line that you did not cross

00:22:54.180 and achilles crossed that line he does and and he in in a sense the point that is so

00:23:02.060 poignant in the story is that while you understand his grief and his pain because we've gotten to

00:23:10.760 know hector too there's a sense that hector you know does not deserve what achilles does to him

00:23:18.620 and achilles actually strips the body naked and drags it behind his chariot this is desecration of

00:23:24.800 a corpse and this is something that most cultures even today of course consider to be a gross violation

00:23:31.040 and when he does that the horror of it strikes everyone on both sides of the conflict and again

00:23:37.520 i mentioned they had the uh the story has the greek gods in it and the gods are horrified that's that's

00:23:43.720 how far he's gone over the line and at that point it no longer matters that achilles is objectively the

00:23:50.860 best fighter because he still is there's nobody doubts that nobody questions that but he's lost

00:23:56.960 this essential quality he's no longer honorable having done that to the corpse and he even realizes

00:24:04.900 he crossed the line when hector's father priam comes to achilles to get his body get hector's body

00:24:10.800 back oh yes and i love that scene it's an incredibly powerful scene in in the epic because what you end up

00:24:17.920 seeing is an old warrior near the end of his life who knows that there's not much left for him so this is

00:24:25.460 you know the king who has seen so many of his sons die and now his his favorite son and heir hector has

00:24:32.620 died and he knows his city's going to fall it's just you know there's there's no good news on the horizon

00:24:37.300 for him and he has to swallow his pride and go beg for his son's body back from the man who killed him

00:24:45.180 and the man who desecrated that body but when they actually confront one another achilles looks at the

00:24:51.240 older version of himself in a sense and he's incredibly moved and he the two of them weep together

00:24:59.360 and they talk about in a sense the horror of war but they also talk specifically about basically the

00:25:07.960 unfairness of life and how from their perspective the the gods dole out good things and bad things

00:25:15.560 but they never give anyone just good they only give a mix at best and for some people nothing but

00:25:22.940 sorrow and so they see themselves as equal sufferers in this experience and achilles relents and

00:25:32.540 essentially gets gets his soul back gets some of his soul back from that experience and he he does return

00:25:38.400 the body because he has seen that what he did was wrong and that he wants to be worthy again and he

00:25:47.180 he does make that ultimate decision now i will say in the way that the homeric cycle proceeds it happens

00:25:53.340 outside the bounds of the iliad but the gods still punish achilles uh and his punishment is significant too

00:26:01.880 in that he's ultimately killed by someone who isn't worthy so the gods actually help prince paris

00:26:09.220 shoot that arrow that famously hits achilles in his heel his one weak spot and that is shameful under

00:26:18.060 their culture to be killed by someone who is less than you are and so there too the punishment does still

00:26:25.060 come to achilles all right so it sounds like from the the iliad we we can learn that the ancient greece did

00:26:31.180 have an had a code of ethics and war that it could cross the line and achilles is a manifestation of

00:26:36.040 that i think hector is also just a great example of an ideal soldier that you'd want to embody like he

00:26:42.320 he knew he was going to lose but he still felt duty bound to defend defend his home defend his country

00:26:48.840 absolutely and he's another example of someone who is very relatable even in modern times

00:26:56.120 because he he is honorable but it's not in a kind of empty reflex way he thinks deeply about what he's

00:27:04.960 facing and he admits privately you know we get a glimpse inside his mind and he admits that he wishes

00:27:12.640 he could run away from it all and there even is a moment before he has his ultimate you almost want to

00:27:18.140 call it a duel with achilles where he actually does run away so he has a moment of weakness that is

00:27:24.500 so human that it kind of just makes him a little bit more lovable he sees achilles with armor made by

00:27:31.940 the gods and recognizes that he has no chance of surviving and for a moment his will cracks and and

00:27:38.400 he runs away from him but then what brings him back is also relatable he believes that he sees one of his

00:27:45.740 brothers so imagine that in kind of a band of brothers sense and that reminds him again of this identity

00:27:52.980 he's reminded of who he is and what he owes others and it's actually that love that he feels for troy

00:27:59.820 and for his fellow trojans that makes him stop running and turn and face his inevitable death at the hands

00:28:06.800 of achilles and that is again i think a moment where people really recognize that this experience is

00:28:16.160 timeless that you can put yourself in this character's shoes from millennia ago and recognize

00:28:24.660 things that we could see in any modern conflict all right so let's fast forward to the ancient romans

00:28:31.620 and you say the romans had sort of a johnness faced view towards military ethics what do you mean by that

00:28:38.780 well on on the one hand the influences on the romans were partly from the existing religion that that

00:28:49.380 was there at the time which was a follow-on in many ways to the one that we saw in the iliad the greek

00:28:54.940 religion the polytheistic with many gods and they had philosophies that were dominant at the time that

00:29:02.580 the roman legion was at its height and they influenced the troops certainly at the time and

00:29:11.100 probably the one that is most relevant for that is stoicism and that has absolutely survived until

00:29:18.480 the present day and has helped many people in trying to reconcile themselves to their fates in in in war

00:29:25.500 and other conflicts but there was also a thread of what we would today call sort of hedonism but the

00:29:33.500 idea that if there is no afterlife which many of the romans believe there was not or there wasn't a

00:29:41.020 meaningful one there wasn't one where you would be sorted based on your behavior that all there is is

00:29:47.740 this life and so you probably heard the old saying you know eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die

00:29:52.520 so there's a a bit of a being torn between a almost devil may care attitude on the one hand

00:30:00.900 and the stoic philosophy which is incredibly demanding in fact stoicism is so demanding that it does not

00:30:08.620 allow any wavering from honorable behavior even if you are tortured even if you are put under extreme

00:30:18.260 duress there's just no excuses in that in that original tradition the idea is that you must always

00:30:25.420 do the right thing kind of uh to use another expression though the heavens fall and so all of

00:30:32.000 which is to say that roman legions going off into far corners of the empire had to decide which of these

00:30:39.980 inspired them and which of these got them through all in the context of fighting in disciplined units

00:30:46.880 where you had to be able to rely on the man next to you and you had to know that that man was going to

00:30:55.860 keep his shield where it needed to be to protect your flank and if they weren't there then you were dead

00:31:02.960 so it's an interesting i think tradition to study because you have to look at how all those things

00:31:10.120 played together and how people found their way with all these different influences i mean so on that

00:31:16.760 stoicism side for a soldier or a military leader you know marcus aurelius is the most famous military

00:31:22.620 leader who was also stoic philosopher like what did it mean to be a virtuous warrior if you took that

00:31:29.460 stoic idea well it was the ultimate no complaints no excuses philosophy so for marcus aurelius

00:31:40.120 and you're quite right you know he was someone who led troops into combat and um was himself

00:31:46.980 right there with them in a lot of cases so he wasn't wasn't leading back from back at the capital

00:31:52.340 he had the belief that everything was predetermined that you had a role to play and whether we want to

00:32:02.120 play that out as fate or however you want to think of that but the important thing was you were assigned

00:32:08.020 role and if your role was a soldier in the roman legions then it was your entire purpose in life

00:32:15.780 to do that role as well as you could so whatever task you were given every one of those tasks had that

00:32:24.060 same point of pressure on it so what i mean by that is that you couldn't slack off anywhere if you

00:32:34.980 were told to clear a forest then by god you needed to clear that forest the best way a forest has ever

00:32:41.560 been cleared you were meant to take everything as absolutely defining you so maybe you think of it in

00:32:49.300 this term in these terms it would be to to imagine that if you were told uh to to you know guard a

00:32:58.380 particular point then imagining that that would be the entire story that could ever be told of you

00:33:06.040 whether or not you guarded that point was the way you needed to approach that and so that actually

00:33:11.020 carried on and i mentioned this with the like the torture analogy that you should not sacrifice those

00:33:17.380 tasks and those assignments you shouldn't fail those roles regardless of what happens to you

00:33:22.160 so marcus aurelius made the point that the one thing you have control over is your response to

00:33:31.140 external events the external events are going to do whatever they're going to do and the people

00:33:35.780 around you are going to do whatever they're going to do but the one thing you have control over

00:33:40.040 is your response what how you react and so it was absolutely imperative for a stoic warrior

00:33:47.300 to always react honorably with literally no regard for the consequences to themselves so it's a very

00:33:57.400 very high bar and i i don't think there's many that are much higher that you can find and as you said

00:34:03.320 the the stoic ideal still lives on today many soldiers across the world go to stoicism as a way

00:34:10.480 to help them manage their role as a soldier it still speaks to a lot of people in part because

00:34:19.240 their lives they know are going to be filled with things they can't control and as i mentioned at the

00:34:26.900 very outset a lot of those things are going to be incredibly high stakes they are going to be life and

00:34:32.980 death so when you're faced with a lot of awful things including the losses that you're going to

00:34:40.060 experience and the harms that you yourself have to cause in your job then having this very strict

00:34:49.040 philosophy to fall back on has its comforting elements because you can tell yourself that

00:34:56.400 i have to do these things i have to lose these people but the only thing i can control

00:35:03.520 is whether or not i do the absolute best that i can and as long as i do that i am fulfilling

00:35:10.000 my role and that is all that that i have charge of and so it is something that makes you feel a bit

00:35:18.740 more empowered in an otherwise helpless situation and unfortunately troops find themselves in those

00:35:26.080 kind of situations a lot right well you know james stockdale a famous prisoner of war in vietnam

00:35:31.740 went on to become a professor i think the war college he famously he used stoicism to get through

00:35:37.320 his years in vietnam as a prisoner of war absolutely and and he made it completely clear that he does

00:35:43.600 not think he could have survived without that philosophy because if you talk about feeling

00:35:48.500 helpless there is no more helplessness than than being in that kind of prisoner situation where every

00:35:55.220 everything you experience is being controlled by others with the aim of breaking you down with the

00:36:00.960 intentional aim of trying to to make you give up those ideals may make you violate the trust that

00:36:07.740 you've established make you betray your friends and the only way he found to resist that was to say that

00:36:13.700 these things are happening to my body these things are happening externally to me but the me that i

00:36:21.560 control is untouchable and that's the part of me that responds to it and that's what got stockdale

00:36:28.280 through was clinging on to that idea that he wasn't powerless as much as he appeared powerless

00:36:34.800 he wasn't because he could control his reactions and his writings on that are wonderful to read

00:36:42.720 and i will say his legacy lives on in many ways including that there is a stockdale chair in ethics

00:36:48.480 that's currently held by my very good friend pauline shanks corin up at navy war college and at the

00:36:54.840 naval academy where i used to work there is a stockdale center for ethics so we have not forgotten

00:37:00.120 admiral stockdale do you do you think there are any downsides to using stoicism as an ethical framework

00:37:05.620 for a soldier or warrior the part that i struggle with and i think i say this with the uh understanding

00:37:16.480 that not everyone will struggle with it and so i i don't want to discourage anyone from embracing

00:37:21.860 stoicism if it is helpful they they need what they need but for myself i think what i struggle with

00:37:29.000 is that it does require you to have a certain kind of emotional detachment from suffering and loss not

00:37:36.860 only in the moment but permanently and that i'm not sure is sustainable for everyone i think that depends

00:37:44.940 a lot on individual psychology and what i mean by that is it's one thing to say that you can't

00:37:51.900 unfortunately take time to mourn your losses in the middle of ongoing combat if you did more people

00:38:00.780 may die you you have to to some extent embrace stoicism to get through that moment with any hope of of of

00:38:10.160 seeing future moments but i like better the idea that then when you are finally allowed out of that

00:38:20.340 urgent moment and allowed a moment to breathe that you can also fully mourn and remember those you've lost

00:38:32.360 and feel that pain and experience it maybe even weep the way that that achilles wept with king prime

00:38:39.640 and i think that to suggest that there's any weakness to that is a bad idea and and i'm not

00:38:47.700 sure stoicism necessarily does accuse anyone of of weakness but it certainly does discourage

00:38:53.560 taking those moments later and myself for myself i believe that it's really important to give people

00:39:01.220 the time and the space to mourn and fully feel what they've gone through and in fact other warrior

00:39:08.540 cultures that i studied have more about that and more about how that can help with the transitions

00:39:14.220 all right let's fast forward to medieval era and particularly the round table the knights of the

00:39:21.720 round table which is probably the most famous code in the west because this is you know particularly when

00:39:27.000 you in mallory's arthurian tells you actually see a code sort of explicitly laid out like because the

00:39:32.880 knights have to take this oath so for those who aren't familiar what was the oath sort of the general

00:39:37.480 tenets of it well what's what's wonderful about this this idea and the way that mallory wrote it i

00:39:43.420 mean again we have to note that this is someone writing a work of fiction and trying to create an

00:39:49.820 ideal and that ideal has inspired many people and i don't think there's anything wrong with that i think

00:39:54.500 that sometimes in fact these fictional works because they allow us inside the minds of these different

00:40:01.740 people experiencing war are more helpful than any other source in in allowing us to work through

00:40:09.460 what is needed for a good code so in mallory's work what we're looking at is an idealized code of

00:40:15.700 chivalry and it includes things like never to do outrageosity i love that word or murder it requires you

00:40:23.520 to always do sucker for those who are in need and particularly damsels in distress basically the

00:40:30.300 the broad strokes of it are to require the knights to be servant leaders and i like talking about this

00:40:40.360 particularly now because i think this is a concept that a lot of people who work in the space of of

00:40:46.580 leadership are familiar with but that doesn't always make it into the public conversation around what

00:40:52.560 leaders should be and in in mallory's le mort d'artour and in other works about king arthur

00:40:59.760 one of the things that really does come through is the idea that knights while they had the power

00:41:06.560 while they were the best armed they had the equipment they had the skills to just be bullies to just be

00:41:13.900 tyrants they voluntarily took an oath to use that power to help those who were weaker than themselves

00:41:21.800 and to not abuse that power so the whole outrageosity point is that you are not to use

00:41:30.060 this strength that you have as a way to take advantage of others but instead to advance what's

00:41:37.800 right and that's really relatable again because it fits nicely with the idea that and i saw this with

00:41:45.060 with my midshipmen and i still see this with the troops that i get to work with today the people

00:41:51.360 who sign up for the military in in this country they they don't want to be the bad guys they don't

00:41:57.440 you know they're not joining for the most part to uh simply be able to take people out they actually

00:42:04.480 have more of a guardian role in mind and that is this chivalry ideal in a lot of ways it's this

00:42:12.780 concept that you take the strength and you use it as a force for good in the world and you use it to

00:42:20.200 protect the weak and i think a lot of that does come in the west from this concept of the knights

00:42:26.720 of the round table and what that what that ideal represents for people uh so you devote a section to

00:42:32.980 native american warrior codes and you know native american culture every tribe is different has its own

00:42:37.500 unique warrior culture for your book what tribes did you focus on well i absolutely could not do

00:42:43.980 justice to the incredible wide range of tribes of native americans and and that's again only looking

00:42:51.220 at native americans is there's so many other indigenous groups around the world so what i ended up doing was

00:42:57.780 to focus on the plains tribes and i did that largely because i wanted to bring in particular points

00:43:05.440 of wisdom that i didn't think were necessarily captured in the other cultures that i'd looked at

00:43:11.980 yet and that i think again have great relevance for modern troops and in particular what i wanted to

00:43:20.260 bring out that i thought the plains tribes were really quite brilliant at was the understanding of

00:43:26.840 these transitions that people who fight need to make and what i mean by that is when you have to

00:43:33.720 cross that line of taking a human life even if you do it within the boundaries of a warrior's code

00:43:43.220 it still does something to you even if you have no doubt in the moment that you had to do it that it was

00:43:50.840 you or him even if it it falls even in a square place of self-defense in your mind or if you were

00:43:58.880 defending someone else you still took a human life and that has a cost and you also simply participated

00:44:07.120 in a level of violence that doesn't fit anywhere else that if you did the same behavior in another

00:44:15.280 context in your society it would horrify everyone so you need some help transitioning from that experience

00:44:23.900 and even from the structure and living with other warriors that you have been in in order to do

00:44:31.680 whatever mission you're on to transition from that back to being with your family being with your tribe

00:44:38.240 in this case so what they put in place and it does differ for different tribes but but to give you the

00:44:46.180 gist of it were different transition rituals that really acknowledged this need to feel that you were

00:44:55.260 setting aside that part of you that was the warrior and returning to the peaceful part of you that could

00:45:02.600 be with your family and that would not commit what we would call today acts of domestic violence for

00:45:07.900 example and so they would do things that would mark the point where you have stepped away from your

00:45:15.180 combat role and you are stepping back into your peaceful role within the tribe they would allow

00:45:20.520 you to purge yourself whether it's for example a sweat lodge ceremony where you're literally sort of

00:45:26.740 sweating out you know that experience but also talking about it and one of the things that isn't

00:45:31.660 always understood is that there's an element of group therapy in a lot of these rituals where you

00:45:37.840 and others who have seen what you've seen and done what you've done are in it together and you're all

00:45:44.500 letting it go and you're all taking this moment to acknowledge it and process it before you return

00:45:51.380 to your families so you can change modes and i just think that's something that we have lost sight of

00:45:58.360 there there's been tremendous work by folks who work in the space of moral injury i particularly admire

00:46:04.960 the work of jonathan shea who's done just marvelous things he wrote the book achilles in vietnam and also

00:46:11.160 odysseus in america and others who have understood this importance of transitions but it hasn't made

00:46:20.020 it all the way again through the culture and it hasn't made it into policy and practice to the degree

00:46:26.160 i would like to see it that idea of rituals for transitioning into warrior mode and then transitioning

00:46:30.940 out of warrior mode is something that we could an insight we can get from native american culture

00:46:35.480 absolutely okay let's move on to an eastern warrior culture and probably the most famous that people

00:46:43.000 know about here in the west is the bushido code of the samurai first can you give us a little bit of

00:46:48.520 background on the samurai because i think it'll help us understand why they developed this code that they

00:46:53.280 did oh yes i mean it is absolutely fascinating that it's no surprise that that people have heard of it

00:47:00.040 because it it draws you in once you start studying and learning about the samurai and bushido it does

00:47:05.960 definitely draw you in the starting point is already incredibly complex because they're influenced by four

00:47:14.180 different religions and finding the balance point there amongst four different influences is quite quite the

00:47:21.280 trick they're influenced by the indigenous religion of japan shinto but also buddhism and

00:47:30.040 taoism and confucianism and all of those are woven into this fabric of a warrior's code where you

00:47:40.000 are to balance things that aren't necessarily at least on the face of it all that compatible and what i mean

00:47:46.660 by that is so on the one hand shinto requires you to honor your ancestors and act in a way that

00:47:53.960 reflects honor on them and that is a kind of an attachment that you have to to the past and to a legacy

00:48:03.920 and to a tradition now you can understand that being very powerful in warrior's code but when you blend

00:48:10.500 that with buddhism the core tenet of which is non-attachment it's hard to know how you find again the balance

00:48:18.440 point for that but buddhism amongst many other things teaches another point that you can imagine

00:48:27.140 being very helpful to warriors and and that is this idea that as you go through life you are trying to

00:48:35.060 find the middle path between extremes and that if you allow your experiences in war to drive you to one

00:48:42.380 of these extremes then you are pushing yourself further from enlightenment and you have to keep

00:48:47.820 bringing yourself back and trying to find that middle path that middle way it also has these

00:48:54.380 defined limits around right action and trying to find how you can behave correctly as a warrior in that

00:49:02.520 role and and still be moving towards a better understanding of your place in the universe and it helps deal

00:49:09.260 with death as well because ultimately the goal for a buddhist is not any kind of individual survival

00:49:17.080 but to really merge with the infinite to be one with the universe and the peace that is meant to come

00:49:25.640 from that is an end of all suffering so you could see that as something held out as hope for warriors who are

00:49:32.040 seeing a lot of suffering and having to endure a lot of pain and and and discomfort but then they're also

00:49:37.940 balancing those two influences with taoism which is something that what i emphasize in the book is that

00:49:46.380 really when you have to go into a combat situation the level of focus that you required to maintain we often

00:49:57.460 talk about people having their head on a swivel and having to be on a level of alert that is incredibly

00:50:03.580 much of a strain to maintain for a long period of time that that wears you out in a in a unique way

00:50:10.920 and throws you out of balance and taoism is all about balance and it's about balancing things like

00:50:16.720 the yin and the yang and finding your other side to put yourself back at peace so it is helpful for

00:50:25.100 the warriors and actually the samurai played this out in a fascinating way because they thought of

00:50:30.380 well if i'm going to be fighting and the combat side of me is going to be bringing out all of that

00:50:37.140 violence then in my downtime i need to intentionally choose to do things that are the opposite of that

00:50:43.760 and so they would do things like watercolor painting and origami and flower arranging and being out in

00:50:51.400 nature and i find it fascinating that modern work in neurology and neuroscience neuroethics even all of this

00:50:59.460 area it's an emerging fields that are fascinating bear this out that it is really helpful for a

00:51:07.200 healthy and and and stable brain to cycle in this way that if you're experiencing too much of one kind

00:51:14.840 of stimulation you need to intentionally balance it with these others so they had a they had an intuitive

00:51:19.960 sense of that and then last but not least this confusion influence has a lot to do with your

00:51:26.500 relationships with other people in particular power relationships and that's something that a lot of

00:51:33.500 people think of when they think of the samurai because they had a tremendously strong sense of duty

00:51:39.380 to those in leadership roles and the idea that you would always help those above you save face

00:51:46.260 and that you would do everything in your power to not embarrass them and to make them look good

00:51:52.200 even at your own expense and so all of these play into how the samurai tried to shape their code

00:51:59.880 and this code i mean it influenced japanese soldiers all the way into world war ii it absolutely did and

00:52:06.560 one could even argue that it still influences a lot of japanese business tactics today there's there's

00:52:12.900 still this idea that saving face is important and that that can work both ways what i mean by that is

00:52:20.940 on the positive side it is selfless it is putting the interests of the mission or the unit above

00:52:28.620 yourself but it can be bad if it's around simply covering up bad things covering up negativity or bad

00:52:38.320 news from people who actually need to know it in order to make sure that no one is embarrassed and you can

00:52:45.340 see those struggles even today in japanese politics and and other elements of their culture that on the

00:52:52.180 one hand um tremendous loyalty and some selflessness that that can be astounding but on the other hand

00:52:59.380 sometimes covering up bad things or bad news in a way that that delays proper responses so with all these

00:53:09.900 codes i mean i think even today we can see the influence of these you know ancient warrior codes that we've

00:53:14.340 talked about even today even with our rules of engagements laws of warfare that we have i think

00:53:18.960 most soldiers go in understanding there's a higher code a more amorphous vague code that they're they're

00:53:24.120 called to to fill do you think with the way that war is changing today let's say with asymmetric

00:53:29.640 warfare drones cyber warfare does do code need to change are they going to stay the same

00:53:35.700 the need for the code is not going to change and in fact arguably it's more important than ever

00:53:43.640 the details of any one code and we've talked about them being vague to start with but the the identities

00:53:50.260 that are developed will have to match what jobs they have but i think it's a huge mistake to imagine that

00:53:58.880 warrior codes will ever be a thing of the past as long as there is war and conflict as long as people

00:54:05.120 are dying and an example i can give is when we first started using uavs and so forth your drones

00:54:12.680 there was a mistaken belief and i even fell into this briefly at the beginning just when i first heard

00:54:19.100 about them before i had a chance to reflect on it further or talk to to folks about it there was a sense

00:54:24.980 that people thought maybe those fighting from so far away with video screens in front of them

00:54:33.900 would be immune from things like moral injury that they would be it would feel to them like a video

00:54:40.500 game that that was that was the concern that people had and and also for some even a positive that oh

00:54:46.740 well maybe we will have fewer incidents of of trauma amongst these folks but as things played out we

00:54:53.040 realized that sadly that was not the case and in fact there were high incidents of for example pts and

00:55:01.560 other trauma responses among drone operators and one of the reasons was that they were not detached

00:55:09.340 although they were physically away from the the moment of of the impact for example of what they're doing

00:55:15.780 they could see it and they could see it in high res you know they could see highly pixelated details

00:55:22.220 of the people they were watching the people they were effectively stalking and then ultimately

00:55:27.640 killing and then see the the effects of those deaths on the family members nearby and so forth

00:55:33.540 so it actually was more important than ever that they understand where their lines were and when those

00:55:43.860 killings were justified and when they were not because to the degree that they couldn't see a difference

00:55:49.040 between what they were doing and someone murdering someone with a sniper rifle

00:55:53.960 if they couldn't see that difference then they felt themselves that they had done something vile

00:56:03.200 and so we we have to again for the sake of the warriors themselves we have to make sure that these

00:56:08.960 lines are clear and that they exist and a lot of that pressure is also on policymakers because it is a

00:56:15.960 betrayal of our troops to ask them to do things that cross too many lines and and that is in fact

00:56:24.540 undermining them not making life easier for them it always drives me nuts when people who who have

00:56:30.440 a distanced perspective to all of this will say you know why should you have any rules for our troops

00:56:37.020 just just let them take the gloves off and fight any way they want that's not doing our troops a favor

00:56:42.520 that's actually making life worse for them you don't help them by removing the code the code is

00:56:49.600 there for their protection it's there to allow them to hold on to their humanity and to know that what

00:56:56.440 they're doing has honor to it and if you strip that away from them you're harming them more than any

00:57:02.540 bullet ever could well shannon this has been a great conversation is there some place people can go to

00:57:06.800 learn more about the book in your work well absolutely i mean we're quite proud of the fact that

00:57:12.300 at my university at case western reserve university we've actually started the first military ethics

00:57:18.380 master's degree program in the country and so you can go to militaryethics at case.edu and learn about

00:57:26.400 that program there and my work and we have some videos and things there that you can watch

00:57:31.100 and also of course the book itself but this work is ongoing and we are always trying to recruit

00:57:39.120 more people into military ethics to help us wrestle with the problems of the past and the future

00:57:45.040 well shannon french thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thank you so much my guest there

00:57:50.080 is shannon french she's the author of the book the code of the warrior exploring warrior values past

00:57:54.400 and present it's available on amazon.com also check out our show notes at aom.is warrior code

00:57:59.380 where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:58:02.160 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at

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00:58:57.580 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#625： The Code of the Warrior

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